From the course: Learning FPGA Development

Xilinx hardware demo - FPGA Tutorial

From the course: Learning FPGA Development

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Xilinx hardware demo

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- [Instructor] Now, we are ready to download the Bitstream into the board, so, this is a good moment to connect the board to a free USB slot. Make sure to turn on the board, and you will see the Xilinx demo application running on the board, which also has all of the displays counting up. So back to Vivado, we are now asked what to do next. And for this particular example, we will open the hardware manager. So, this is a special view that has a link on top that says no hardware target is open. So, we have to click here to open the target, and we get to choose the auto connect option. Now, we have a connection, and then, we get to program the device. It's that simple. Now, we are asked where the Bitstream file is located. And you will see that it is somewhere in your projects structure. Let me show you. So, you will have to browse to your projects folder, and then, you will have to browse to the runs sub folder, then, impl, as in implementation, and there you have it. We are interested in the bit file. So, now, we click on program, and as you can see, the board is showing all zeros. Just like the case of the intel board, we have the right-most switches connected to the variables A and B, A being the left-most. So, let's say we want to add one plus one, that is two. Then, let's say nine plus three, that is C or 12. And let's go for that number, C, plus A equals 16 again. Now, remember that this may seem as if all of the displays are turned on at the same time, but that's not what's happening. Now, take a look at the right-most LED, which is turned on. Now, let's press the center button, and take a look at the behavior of this system now. As you can see, the LED is blinking at one hertz, that is, it is changing its state once per second. And the displays are showing their individual values, each at its time. So, once again, I will release the center button, and there you have it, persistence of vision. I will press the button again, every single display digit is blinking. Now, I will release the button again. One of the most important things about this example is that you must understand that there is no microprocessor doing all of this. There is no microcontroller behind this, and it's not your computer that is doing this. It's the FPGA, and an FPGA is not running any code. It's not behaving as a circuit by executing instructions. It has actually become that circuit. That's what's amazing about FPGAs, and if you think about it, it's a very efficient way of performing this operation.

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